


while vigil you're keeping (through rain and storm)

by spacenarwhal



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Crafts, Gun Violence, Hobbies, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Team Bonding, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 21:44:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13773189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: “You owe me a scarf asshole.” Jessica shoots back, kicking her legs up, feet braced against the base of the bed.Matt snorts and that hurts—sirens and monitors and rushing feet, panicked voices, hearts, so many hearts, going fast, slowing down, stopping, going still, hundreds of hearts in his ears—and he clenches his hands tight as though that’ll help him hold on to himself.“I hate hospitals.” Matt says raggedly, sharper than he means to, and Jessica squeezes the handrail so tightly the metal creaks."Yeah.” She agrees mildly, “They blow."





	while vigil you're keeping (through rain and storm)

i.

“I can’t fucking believe this shit.” Jessica says and under the jagged-edged anger is the frantic thudding of her heart, the steady press of her hands against his side undercut by the bitter tang of fear on her breath when she exhales. 

“I’m alright.” He tries for the tenth time but Jessica grunts at him to shut up, wadded wool pressed to the bleeding wound in his side. Already there are sirens blaring closer, pedestrians running startled all across the courthouse steps and adjacent streets and somewhere in mid-town Foggy and Karen and Claire and Malcolm and Luke and Colleen and—Matt doesn’t know when he acquired all these people, but they’re there now, they’re his and he’s letting them down, bleeding on the courthouse steps instead of getting into a cab to go to a surprise birthday lunch he’s not supposed to know about. They’re waiting. And he’s bleeding.

“Are you hurt?” He asks, hissing when Jessica presses down hard, harder, until Matt cuts off a strangled groan, grits his teeth and swallows the pain, sweat prickling across his skin and he wants to reassure her that help is almost here, that he’s going to be okay, but the gunshot is still ringing in his ears and everything stinks of blood and adrenaline and fear, it’s seeping into everything, blurring the world soft. 

“I’m not the one impersonating swiss cheese right now, Murdock, so just _shut up_.” Jessica snaps, cursing as her head whips in the direction of the sirens, calling out for the paramedics to hurry up already.

Matt smell blood and gunpowder and burning iron, the city trembles under his rigid back and rises up around them like a roaring wave until he can’t tell the two apart, what’s under and what’s over, everything narrows to the press of Jessica’s hands against his throbbing side and the sensation of his heart beating blood out into the wreckage left behind by the bullet lodged somewhere inside him. He’s filling up, bloating and emptying simultaneously, pain growing into a flashpoint that wipes the rest of the world blank. 

ii.

“Man, you really will do anything to get out of a birthday party, won’t you Matty?” Foggy jokes weakly, voice still nasally with what he swears are tears of anger over being stood up. He wipes at his face with a heavy hand while the fingers of his other hand twitch gently against Matt’s wrist. 

There’s a pressure in his arm and Matt can feel his heart in a way he perfected in ignoring years ago, each pump of blood at the center of his chest, drumming in his veins, pulsing around the lead in his arm where the drip’s been attached. His skin feels paper-thin and fuzzy, like wet newspaper, so insubstantial he’s surprised Foggy’s fingers don’t sink right through it and dig right down to his hollow bones. 

Matt groans, feels it more than he hears it, the way the sound rolls up his windpipe. Foggy’s fingers stroke over his wrist, his thumb fans over the bone there in small circles while his voice fills in the gaps and cracks of Matt’s perception, stopping up the leaks long enough for Matt to find his way back to higher grounds. 

Machines beep, sirens blare down below. The sensation of Foggy’s fingers fizzes up the length of his arm, dances in the crook of his elbow and prickles down his side, seems to creep right under the edges of the medical tape securing the gauze in place over a still sluggishly seeping wound. Somewhere, down the hall or maybe a floor above, Matt can’t pinpoint it exactly, there’s the tread of tired feet, the scrape of chairs, a small tribe of nervous people milling around, whispering, rustling, breathing. A man offers to make a sizable donation in exchange for visiting rights. His name escapes Matt but the voice makes something hiccup in his chest. A laugh. 

Matt tries to answer, muscles slack with painkillers he wasn’t conscious to refuse, and he’s gripped by the same fierce hatred of hospitals he’s had since he was a child. He forces his mouth to move, his tongue to cooperate. Foggy offers him an ice chip and warns him not to choke. Matt tries again. 

“Is it too early for a midlife crisis?” Matt asks, all the syllables soft as newly risen dough in his mouth, deflating and nearly indistinguishable as he pushes them out. Foggy huffs, almost amused, curls his fingers to a standstill on Matt’s arm. 

“You’re the luckiest asshole alive, buddy.” Foggy says and his voice is so low it almost gets lost in the chaos of everything else, “You know that right.” A drop of water in a desert, Matt thinks suddenly, wishes he could move his limbs with greater finesse so that he could grab Foggy’s hand. 

“Don’t feel too lucky right now.” Matt mumbles, cotton-tongued and graceless. 

Foggy lifts his hand, palm to palm, wraps his fingers around Matt’s and presses a kiss to the back of Matt’s hand that fizzes like sparkling wine across every nerve ending. “Happy birthday jackass.” 

-

He wakes up groggy and hung over in a way that only strong painkillers leave him, achy and exhausted under the itchy hospital sheets. Everything smells, but not even the scent of bleach can cover up the smell of sickness that permeates the hospital. His side pulls with every breath he takes, a dull deep-seated throb that hits right under his lungs. He tries to breath deep, to center himself in the pain, but he can’t quite manage it. Foggy isn’t anywhere he can pick up, but the room isn’t empty, there’s someone sitting nearby and there’s a rhythmic clicking that coincides with their breathing. It isn’t the mechanical tick of a hospital machine, it’s softer, like the tap of Matt’s cane over the sidewalk as he walks, sure and steady. 

It falters. Stalls. Stops. 

Something moves. Someone stands. 

“Murdock?” Jessica. “You alive?” She asks from her corner of the room, droll as ever, but her footsteps are light as she makes her way closer. 

It’s hard to say how much time has gone by, the world still blurred with the remnants of medicated sleep. Foggy’s down the hall now—down the hall, Matt knows that with some level of certainty now, they’re down the hall—talking to Karen who’s not saying Frank’s name but it’s there all the same in the silences that press into their conversation. Matt doesn’t mean to eavesdrop but it’s hard to ignore when so much of the world keeps bearing down on him. 

Jessica provides a much-appreciated distraction. Matt categorizes every detail he can, tries to build up the discipline Stick expected of him. Keep everything else out.

There’s the pinprick of anguish that snares on an already unraveled thread and pulls, Matt’s face contorting before he can stop it. Stick gone. Like Dad. Like Elektra who is more a ghost to him now than even. Matt draws a deep breath, tugs the line loose and smooths it back into place with clumsy fingers before the rest of him can fray apart.

He draws another breath.

Jessica. The soft rosemary scent of Malcolm’s aftershave and Trish’s favorite perfume, expensive and floral, cling to her skin and clash with the smell of watery coffee and anti-bacterial soap, disinfectant. Her boots scuff over the linoleum with every step like each one she takes is reluctant. She stops short of the bed, drops into the empty chair off to the side with a sigh and a creak, rocks back on two legs and balances on the edge of falling backwards.

“You okay?” Matt asks, voice a rasp. 

Jessica snorts, unimpressed. “ _I’ve_ still got my whole spleen, so yeah, I’m peachy.”

Matt hums, curls his hands into loose fists, breathes out and unfurls his fingers one by one. Against his fingertips the blanket is rough, cheap, washed thin. “Knew I felt lighter.” The words are slightly more intelligible than they were earlier at least. He doesn’t think Jessica would judge, has helped her up bloody and bruised and on a few occasions when she was a bottle deep and staggering and capable of ripping his arm out of its socket, but Matt can’t beat back the need to keep himself together.

“You owe me a scarf asshole.” Jessica shoots back, kicking her legs up, feet braced against the base of the bed. 

Matt snorts and that hurts—sirens and monitors and rushing feet, panicked voices, hearts, so many hearts, going fast, slowing down, stopping, going still, hundreds of hearts in his ears—and he clenches his hands tight as though that’ll help him hold on to himself. 

“I hate hospitals.” Matt says raggedly, sharper than he means to, and Jessica squeezes the armrest so tightly the metal creaks. 

“Yeah.” She agrees mildly, creeping just fraction closer, “They blow.”

iii.

The doctors tell Matt he’s supposed to take it easy for the next month and Claire tells him he’s not putting the suit on for two. “At _least_. I don’t care how much you mediate, you can’t breathe away invasive surgery.” 

Danny, who’s swinging his legs in a disjointed rhythm against the wall where he’s perched at the window, makes a dissenting noise that Claire shushes with absolute authority. “The magic man is not allowed to offer a second opinion.”

Luke chuckles under his breath and Danny slumps backwards, back thumping softly against the glass. “It’s not magic. It’s chi.”

Jessica is entirely silent on the matter.

iv.

“You got shot.” Foggy says once he takes Matt home. He speaks with a beguiling aura of calm that makes Matt’s palms itch. Foggy’s voice doesn’t carry any sort of belittlement, not even the usual disappointment that follows Matt’s worst injuries. Foggy’s not angry, he’s just relieved and that makes something sharp jab under Matt’s skin, defensive and wary as it waits for the other shoe to fall, for the resentment to set in, for the two of them to fall back into the same old cycle from before. 

Matt’s a lot of things but an optimist has never been one of them and he knows that whatever changes there might be in their relationship in the last year there’s no changing who either of them are at their cores. 

Matt will always be reckless where Foggy craves stability, and it’s hard to believe this will work when that much is true. As happy as Matt is these days there’s no ignoring the feeling that it’s only a matter of time before those desires put them at odds again.

There’s cageyness in Matt he fights hard to rein in. It’s nearly impossible to argue when Foggy isn’t biting at the bit. It makes Matt feel like a bigger ass than he already does, walking gingerly around the apartment, feeling winded and wrung out from nothing more than trips from the sofa to the bedroom. 

If Foggy notices his frustration—and he must, Foggy once referred to himself as the Murdock whisperer he wasn’t even drunk when he said it—he hasn’t called Matt out on it yet. There’s just more of that calm reassurance, the constant support. It doesn’t push in where Matt doesn’t want it, only where he needs it, and God, he can’t hide that he needs it. Not this time. The healing wound in his side doesn’t let him.

“It’s okay to take it easy, pal.” Foggy says after Matt reclines on the couch, heart hammering like he’s run a mile rather than just relocating from the bedroom. It’s only his second day home from the hospital, and everything still alternates between overwhelmingly sharp and a fuzzy blur. He makes a note to start decreasing the number of painkillers he takes, if only to deal with the latter. At the kitchen counter Foggy is still moving, filling the kettle with water at the tap. 

“You got shot. _You_. Mild mannered civil servant Matt Murdock of the bleeding heart.”

A smile teases just under the surface of his lips at Foggy’s description. Nothing has ever felt so far from the truth.

“People expect you to take the time to recover. Hell, Brett even sent you a get well card. No one is going to question you taking it easy for a while.” 

Matt focuses on what Foggy’s doing in the kitchen. The clang of the kettle being set down, the hiss of the burner being ignited beneath it. It’s harder than it should be, everything distorted but Matt keeps at it. The water in the kettle starts to shimmer, miniscule bubbles rising to the surface, popping, condensation sliding down the rounded sides of the kettle, back into the water below. Matt listens to the cycle repeat again and again. It takes him a second to latch back on to what Foggy’s saying. 

“You’re still technically your own boss Murdock, that’s the beauty of consulting. So put your feet up and enjoy one of these ritzy baskets Jeri’s people sent. It’s got Vermont pears in it Matty. _Organic_. Free.” He’s genuinely genial and Matt is caught in the rocky middle land that exists between wanting to be cared for and hating anything like being coddled.

Matt turns his frown towards the back of the couch. There’s a dull ache in him, a part of Matt that misses the days when he lived by himself and no one knew what it was he did in his spare time. Life felt easier than, even if felt lonelier too. The price he had to pay for that degree of freedom. In his lowest moments he wonders if it wasn’t a fair bargain after all. 

The kettle gurgles thinly. Foggy takes two cups off the dish rack.

He sets them both down on the coffee table and Matt moves his legs so that Foggy can sit, stretches his calves out over Foggy’s lap once he’s settled. The tea will be too hot to drink for at least another 15 minutes, maybe he’ll fall asleep again before then and not have to drink it at all. 

Foggy reaches down and clasps his hand around Matt’s socked foot where it’s sticking out of the blanket. It’s such a gentle touch Matt feels guilty all over again and bitter for feeling guilty at all. This isn’t technically anyone’s fault. Certainly not Foggy’s. And just this once, it’s not even Matt’s.

Wrong place, wrong time.

High profile mobster Daredevil had nothing to do with apprehending taken to trial the same day Matt was representing a woman seeking sole custody of her child. Jessica had provided the evidence against her former spouse. 

“I don’t need convincing you know.” Matt mumbles, and it doesn’t feel entirely like a lie. Still, the words he doesn’t say swell like a balloon in his chest, pull at his stitches. 

Wrong place. Wrong time. Except not, because Matt made a choice, same as he does every day whether he puts on the suit or a tie. 

Matt heard the gun fire and moved before he could second guess the motion. A single split second to guess the trajectory of the bullet, to push against Jessica and knock them both down because keeping still would have meant a fatal shot without any kind of defense. A mob snitch would still be sitting in protected custody but that bullet would have cut through cartilage and muscle and blood vessels and tissue, it would have made shreds of Jessica’s insides, would have spilled her life’s blood out over the courthouse steps. 

“I just—” Foggy sighs, his hand tightens briefly, fingertips pressing against the sole of Matt’s foot. “I like having you in one piece, y’know.” There’s fear underlining each syllable. Foggy doesn’t have to say anything for it to press down on Matt’s throat. He feels it in the slight tremble of Foggy’s palm skirting over his shin. “Guess I sort forgot Daredevil isn’t the only one of your personas I have to worry about it.” There’s a self-deprecating chuckle, Foggy’s palm runs back towards Matt’s ankle.

The days when Matt would have tried to convince Foggy there was nothing to worry about are far, far behind them. He tries for a grin instead. “At least Matt Murdock’s got insurance.”

Foggy huffs out a laugh.

They sit in gentle silence and Matt tries to ease himself into it, tries to accept it as it wraps around him, blurring everything soft. Foggy sighs, the exhale felt more than heard. 

“Who knows Matty, maybe if you take it easy Claire might reassess her medical opinion. Get you back on the streets sooner.” It’s hard to read intention behind the words, Foggy a warm smudge Matt’s senses can’t decipher as well as he’d like. 

“I’ll try.” Matt says gently, because Foggy’s trying, because Claire ordered, because despite everything Matt is trying too. 

He is, he made that choice. 

v.

Jessica comes by on the fifth day of his confinement. “I brought soup.” She says shortly, crinkling a paper bag in Matt’s direction but all Matt can smell on her is something sharp as acetone, it swishes in her pocket when she walks in. “Yeah that too.” She says wryly, striding by him without pause. 

“Foggy ask you to come by?” Matt asks, trying not to sound as bothered by the thought as he is. Pain and boredom is making him crabby, he can concede as much, but that doesn’t erase it. 

Jessica snorts, leaves the soup on the table and deposits herself on the couch, boots up on the coffee table. “I don’t take orders from your boyfriend Murdock. I came by because Malcolm says it’s what people do. Maybe if you slept with people outside your immediate circle of acquaintances you’d know something about that.”

Matt frowns, opens his mouth to protest and then closes it because his dating habits aren’t Jessica’s business. He tries again. “Uh, thanks, I—I appreciate the gesture. But you didn’t have to go out of your way. I’m really fine.”

“Yeah. Sure. You look ready to run a marathon. Maybe jump a tall building in a single bound.” Jessica says drily. She sighs, sinks further into the couch. “You guys still don’t have a TV?” 

Matt scratches at his arm. There’s a welt there from where he hit the stone step of the courthouse. It stings under his nails. “We don’t need one.” He says weakly. He’s going to buy Foggy one for his birthday if only because he’s tired of moving Foggy’s laptop out of bed when he comes back at the end of the night.

“Shouldn’t the honeymoon phase be over by now? You’ve known each other for over a decade.” Jessica drawls, clearly unimpressed, boots thumping as she drops her legs back onto the floor.

Matt bites down a sigh of his own, more frustrated than offended. “Did you really come here to discuss my love life?”

“I’m sort of winging it as I go, actually.” Jessica answers and Matt shakes his head, his bad mood clinging to his shoulders even as he tries to peel it away. “Trying to make sure you don’t go all Jack Torrance cooped up in here.”

Matt shrugs, grin twitching at the corner of his mouth. “No T.V. and no beer make me go something, something.”

“Har, har.”

Matt struggles not to smile. He can’t be sure, not the way he’d like to be, his senses still shot with prescription medication and fatigue he can’t will away, but he’s almost positive Jessica flips him off before taking a pull of her flask.

“Did you bring enough for two?” He asks.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to mix booze with those pills you’re on.” Jessica says skeptically, Matt rolls his eyes upward.

“I was talking about the soup.”

Jessica reaches for the bag she left on the floor. “Sure wasn’t planning on just watching you eat, hornhead.”

-

Jessica keeps trying to steal the dumplings out of his container—“They’re kreplach, Murdock, can’t you hear the difference?” There’s enough sarcasm dripping from Jessica’s voice for Matt to slip on—while Matt tries to guess which deli she got lunch from. 

It’s not the worse way to spend an afternoon, the city edging its way towards the deepest part of autumn outside and Jessica Jones in his living room never once asking about the stitches in his side. 

“How’s business?” Matt asks once he’s drained most of the chicken broth from his soup container and Jessica’s snagged the last kreplach. 

Jess shrugs, couch cushion shifting under her weight. “I’m between cases right now. Malcolm was pretty insistent we needed the breather after all the excitement.” She trails off and there’s a note of apprehension in the air, it ripples through the room like a drop of rain water after it hits the surface of a puddle. Jessica swallows, pulls a breath, and Matt follows the rhythm of her pulse in her veins, how it goes half a beat quicker than before. 

Jessica punches him in the arm. Lightly.

“Stop with the super senses already.”

Matt scowls. “I can’t exactly help it.”

Jessica pushes herself to her feet with a harsh sigh. “You know that’s a shit excuse right?”

Matt frowns, wishes he could stand half as easily as she did. It still pulls, offsets the muscle-deep ache where the bullet dug in. “It’s not an excuse. There’s no off switch, my senses are _there_ all the time. I can’t just turn them off or something.” It’s a conversation he’s tried of having. With Claire and Foggy and Karen and Frank. Jessica’s never asked for the hard details but there’s still discomfort there. He can understand, for the most part. Matt knows she values her privacy.

“I know that, I’m just—you don’t always have to do something with what you get on your radar or whatever. Sometimes you just have to—you have to let things _be_. Last time I checked you weren’t bulletproof asshole.”

There’s so much weight to the word that Matt struggles not to let his shoulders cave under it. Shit.

Matt balls his right hand into a fist over his knee, wishes vaguely that he was wearing something better than sweat pants. “You’re not either.” He shoots back, and the edge in his voice isn’t meant for Jessica, not really. But there’s nowhere else for the restless energy to go, this stifled frustration that only seems to grow the clearer his head gets.

“I can take care of myself.” Jessica snaps, “I don’t need your blood on my hands a second time.” 

Matt bites the tip of his tongue. 

Jessica rocks back on her heels, ready to bolt. 

His side throbs.

He holds out a hand, palm exposed. Jessica bats it away. “I’m not sniffing that.”

Matt huffs a bleak laugh. He’s not going to apologize for saving her life, but there’s no fight with Jessica Jones Matt can win. He’s smart enough to admit that. 

“Don’t go.” Matt says instead, dropping his hand back to his lap. He chews the side of his mouth. Jessica’s heart beats and beats and beats. “I mean—you don’t have to. You can stay if you want to. I’d like it, if you stayed.”

Jessica keeps still for so long Matt thinks she’ll leave after all. Her whole body seems to vibrate when she sighs. The couch groans when she drops back down. There’s the swish of liquid, the sharp scent of liquor. Jessica swallows. 

She offers him the flask as an afterthought. Matt takes a miniscule sip. The liquor—bourbon, cheap—burns across his tongue and stings his throat. 

“You’re an idiot.” She says after a long minute. Matt inclines his head to the left, acquiescing. “So I’ve been told.”

Jessica snorts. “Good.”

vi.

Car alarms. Train cars. Emergency sirens. Laughter. Screaming. Always screaming. Matt turns his head to the side, shrugs the blanket higher, tries to focus on the rattling whistle of the AC unit running in the apartment below, the buzzing electricity of the billboard across the street, the thump of Foggy’s heart at his back. Foggy’s breath pulls in deep, curls at the end, his chest deflates, pushes the air outward again. Even, sure. His foot nudges Matt’s calf beneath the sheets. He wants to roll over, press his face against Foggy’s side, bury his nose in his t-shirt and feel the warmth bleeding off his skin with his forehead, wants to drown his senses in Foggy so that there’s no room for anything else. But there’s no rolling over on his other side just yet, not for the amount of time he needs, so instead Matt lies on his uninjured side, curls his limbs close and tries not to knock down the wall that stands between him and his own sanity. 

His heart pounds restlessly against his ribs. 

(He should be out there. Matt belongs out there, doing what he can to help this city he swore to protect. But the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is no where to be found and it’s because of him, because Matt made a choice. And it was the right choice, he knows that, but this, lying here, useless, is as bad a punishment as Matt knows. Just listening and listening and listening. Like before. Before he knew what it was to take his own life in his hands and use it to make the world just a fraction more just.)

He stretches his legs. Foggy’s foot twitches, his knee nudges the back of Matt’s thigh. He snuffles sleepily at Matt’s back, just between his shoulders, breath puffing damply through the material of Matt’s shirt. Foggy’s heart quickens. His breathing stops and then stutters free. Matt almost feels the exact moment that Foggy comes awake.

“Matty?” Foggy mumbles, hand closing at Matt’s hip, fingers unsteady with sleep. Matt covers Foggy’s hand with his own. It’s hard to ignore the desperate clutch of Foggy’s disoriented fingers, the way he presses his brow to Matt’s shoulder blade.

“I’m right here.” Matt whispers gently, pulling Foggy’s arm more fully around him. Foggy shoves closer, until the gap between them disappears. “It’s okay. Go to sleep, Fog.” 

Foggy whispers his name again and it still sounds like a question, like whatever he dreamt is still playing out behind his eyes. His heart thumps harder, upset, and Matt holds their hands together, tries to sink into the rhythm of it shaking out across Foggy’s skin until it’s all he can hear. 

vii.

Jessica comes back a week later. She brings lunch again—sandwiches this time, pastrami on rye and potato salad, a side of sweet pickles wrapped in wax paper—and a casefile she wants his opinion on. “You owe me sixteen bucks.” She says in greeting, dropping both on Matt’s lap. 

Jeri doesn’t want to see him for another week, at least, and Matt suspects Foggy has something to do with being benched for this long, so Matt’s more than happy to help Jessica with whatever she has for him. 

There isn’t all that much Matt can offer her based off what little information Jessica has, mostly they discuss possibilities and Jessica scribbles notes and circles leads, makes a few phone calls in a high bubbly voice that makes Matt cringe.

“Scary.” He says once she hangs up and Jessica tosses her phone down. There’s the sharp crunch to his left as Jessica takes a bite of the last remaining pickle. “What? Like you don’t do it. Man I’ve heard you, Murdock.” She shoots back, pitching her voice low, “Oh me? I’m just a lawyer, I rescue nuns and set puppies free.”

“Sure, but I charge the puppies full-rate.” Matt answers with a grin. 

Foggy would probably agree with Jessica’s impersonation of him. He tells Jessica as much just to hear her groan. (Foggy and Jessica’s friendship is a funny thing, full of half-jokes and barbs and that gruff affection Jessica extends to her nearest and dearest. “I think,” Foggy told him once, mostly drunk and melancholic after a long night at Josie’s, “She felt bad for me, y’know, after Midland Circle. I was—I wasn’t at my best then—and she—I—I don’t know. You were gone.” And Matt had hated the sadness in his voice, the lump in his own throat rising and rising with every breath he took. When he kissed Foggy his mouth was soft and still full of salt and the afterburn of the tequila he and Karen had chosen that night and he held on to Foggy, hoped it could begin to make up for all the missing months.)

She doesn’t stay as long as she did the first time she visited, starts putting her things away, off to chase another lead almost as soon as the food is gone.

“Uh, I’ve been meaning to give you something.” She says, rummaging through her bag and pulling something free. Paper crinkles in her grip, but whatever’s at the center of it is structureless, gives way under her fingertips. “I was gonna give it to you at the, uh, dinner thing that didn’t happen. But whatever. Happy birthday hornhead.” She tosses it his way and Matt catches a lumpy parcel, almost weightless in his hands. 

“Thanks.” Matt says politely and Jessica sees herself out.

“That’s pretty.” Karen says admiringly, picking up one end of the scarf Matt has spread out over his lap. “A gift from one of your admirers, counsel?”

Matt grins, shakes his head. “Belated birthday gift.” 

Karen drops the scarf. Matt asks about her day, about the story she’s working on, listens to her ease off her shoes and the quiet of her bare feet padding over the wooden floorboards as she makes her way to the kitchen. He feels like there’s been an increase in the number of visitors they get for dinner in the last week. Last night it was Claire and Luke, tonight it’s Karen. Matt should probably talk to Foggy about how he isn’t going to come home to find Matt scrawling on the walls before they wind up hosting a dinner party. Matt’s dealing with his boredom as well as he knows how, he doesn’t need Foggy to schedule playdates. 

“You’re still on antibiotics right?” Karen calls over, pulling the refrigerator door open. 

“Yeah.” Matt answers, combing his fingers over the wool again. There’s a pattern there, it rises and falls under his fingers, soft repetitions. He likes the feel of it almost as much as he does the touch of the material itself. 

“Excellent. I’m drinking your last beer.”

(“Did you even try to fight for me?” Foggy whines when he comes back with dinner, and Matt laughs, filling another glass with water.) 

viii.

He gets the idea in the middle of his third meeting his first week back at work. Mrs. Alba is waiting for him and there’s the rhythmic click-tap of wooden sticks, the pull of thread unwinding. She pauses when she sees Matt, goes to put her knitting away. The ball of yarn rolls off the table and she apologizes as she goes after it. “My sister lives in Michigan.” She says, half-nervous, wrapping loose yarn back over the bulk of the ball in her hand, “I’m making her a hat to keep her warm. It gets so cold there, you know.”

“That’s very kind of you.” Matt answers, “I’m sure she’ll love it.”

Mrs. Alba chuckles, “Oh she hates hats. Her head is too big.”

Matt places the file folder with Mrs. Alba’s information on the table. “Well, I’m sure the thought still counts.”

“Does your mom knit?” He asks Foggy that night, legs draped over one end of the couch, head on Foggy’s lap. 

Foggy’s fingers stop midway through Matt’s hair, nails tapping lightly against Matt’s scalp. 

“Ummm, not that I know. She used to make all our costumes for Halloween and stuff but we’re mostly talking tin foil robots and toilet paper mummies.” Foggy strokes over the crown of Matt’s head. “You feeling crafty Matty?” There’s something coy in Foggy’s voice, intention in the movement of his fingers. For all that Foggy’s never stopped touching him since it happened, it’s been a while since he’s touched him like this. It makes Matt’s skin flush warm, the long-fingered hand of anticipation pressing down over his navel. 

Matt clears his throat. “Maybe.”

Foggy chuckles, still touching Matt’s hair, his other hand pressing over Matt’s chest. Matt turns his head, presses a kiss to Foggy’s belly. “What you thinking about? Huh? Decoupage? Scrapbooking? Claymation animation?”

Matt laughs, tips his head back in Foggy’s lap. “I wasn’t home that long.”

Foggy laughs at his own joke, moves his hand upward until his thumb is brushing over Matt’s adam’s apple.

The conversation gets shelved quickly after, Matt crawling into Foggy’s lap more fully, knees bookending Foggy’s hips and his hands holding Foggy’s face. He chases the warm exhale of Foggy’s laughter with his lips, leans into the hold of Foggy’s hands at his waist. 

Matt doesn’t think about it again until hours later, lying in bed with the city wide awake outside their walls. 

ix.

Knitting is frustrating. Matt spends lunchbreaks and steals snatches of early evening trying to get a hang of it, but the yarn tangles and stitches drop and his needles get stuck when he’s trying to pull them free. Some stitches are too tight and some wobble out of shape and Matt gets impatient, shoves everything in his bag and still somehow feels surprised when the whole thing knots. 

He’s printed pages of patterns in braille, but it seems like every beginner’s guide he can find is loaded with visual references. The online tutorials are a little better but even slowed down it’s hard to keep up with them. Matt approaches knitting like he has every new skill he’s acquired, tries to ease his own impatience by reminding himself only practice can lead to improvement. Even heavyweights need to train.

God, he just wishes it were easier.

“You alright there buddy?” Foggy asks the first time he finds Matt trying to maneuver into his next row. 

“Just trying something new.” Matt grunts, cursing under his breath when he realizes he’s two stitches short. He feels over the previous row to try and pinpoint when that happened. 

“Cool.” Foggy breathes with unfeigned ease, moving right on into the bedroom as though the sight of Matt on the couch surround by a mess of yarn were a nightly occurrence. It’s a cashmere blend, the softest thing Matt touched in the store. The shop assistant had been a little surprised that Matt wanted to drop as much as he did on yarn for his very first project but he wants it to do this right. 

“Can you make me socks for the deep dark winter when you refuse to let me turn on the heater?” Foggy calls from the other room, voice partially muffled as he pulls his shirt off over his head rather than undoing all the buttons. 

Matt frowns, casting his needles to the side entirely. He’s going to have to pull the whole thing apart anyway. “Still trying to get a hang of a straight line buddy. You might have to wait on those socks.”

Foggy chuckles, coming back in to the living room in thick socks Matt knows were stolen from his drawer. He tosses himself down on the couch next to Matt’s botched scarf, all four rows of it, which he picks up and examines. “You know Bess used to knit a bunch when I was a kid. I think she had to quit because of her joints but she could probably give you a few pointers, if you want. It might help if, uh, you want a little more hands on guidance.” 

Matt reaches out, rubs the fragment of scarf between his thumb and forefinger. “Is it that bad?” He asks, already mostly sure of the answer.

Foggy hems and haws, exaggeratedly stalling until Matt pushes him in the shoulder. “Just for that I’m not making you anything.”

x.

“What the hell is this?” Jessica asks when Matt drops his offering on the desk top between them. He didn’t wrap it, just folded the length of lumpy wool over itself and tucked it into his bag before he left the apartment this morning. 

Foggy said it looked okay, toyed with one end of it while Matt cast off his final stitches, but it still felt lopsided in Matt’s hand, uneven and curling over on the left side no matter how many time he smoothed it down with his palm.

“I’ve had a lot of time on my hands recently.” Matt says smoothly, taking a seat in the empty chair opposite Jessica. “I thought I’d look into some new hobbies.” 

Jessica pulls at the mass of the scarf, unwinds it slowly like it might have something dangerous hidden within. It isn’t the worst of Matt’s attempts but it isn’t the best he could do either. 

(Foggy kept his first full scarf Matt made under Bess Mahoney’s tutelage out of cheaper acrylic yarn she had on hand. Foggy swore it was lime green and too good to unravel, put it on as soon as Matt finished to keep him from pulling it apart and wore it on their walk back from Bess’ apartment telling Matt about how he was going to wear it through the winter. he’ll wear it around the apartment and to the store during the winter.)

Jessica hums contemplatively, “You really make this?” She asks, winding her fingers through the material. 

Matt feels his ears grow hot. “Yeah. Hope it’s okay.” Matt clears his throat. “I owed you one.”

Jessica goes quiet. “I’d have taken money too.” She says faintly.

Matt plays with the strap of his cane, presses his lips close. Jessica shifts in her seat. “Thanks hornhead. I guess.”

Matt shrugs, “Don’t—uh—don’t mention it.”

End

**Author's Note:**

> And she never did. But she did give Matt a few tips on how to smooth out his stitches and maybe their next stakeout involved some yarn and for Christmas Matt gives all the Defenders & Co woolen wear and Malcolm is just so happy that Jessica is bonding with people through non-violent means. 
> 
> Also, please forgive any inaccuracies about recovering from a bullet wound, invasive surgery, or learning to knit when visually impaired. 
> 
> Title from the song _Knit One, Purl Two_ by Glenn Miller (because I could not let that pass me up).


End file.
